This is my third attempt at publishing this review, so hopefully three is the charm. My unfounded hunch is that the subject matter is so close to my own life that the editors of IMDb determined that I devoted too much space to personal experience rather than to the film itself. I will state only once that I grew up in the company of immigrant Polish Jews throughout the 1950's and 1960's in the Newark, New Jersey area, only 200 miles up the tracks from the film's locale of Baltimore, so total objectivity on my part is problematic.
In spite of my personal background, I felt curiously distant and detached from most of the film's characters and their lives. Although Armin Mueller-Stahl is a very good actor, his accent is strictly German, which, to my ear, has a very different sound than the Polish Yiddish accent that I know so well. On the other hand, Joan Plowright, who doesn't have a single ounce of Poland or Yiddish in her background, impressively masters the dialect, intonation, and body language perfectly as Mueller-Stahl's wife. My problem is that I didn't find Plowright's character very sympathetic as she is quite a kvetch, if not an incurable dingbat. Why should it be so difficult for an immigrant fleeing from economic, political, and religious persecution to understand the meaning of Thanksgiving, a day dedicated to simple, humble gratitude? Her odd perplexity is even more troubling when we had to endure her clueless whining repeated a second time. And enough with the "toikey" already! Whether that family conflict is based on reality or not, it isn't compelling enough to consume so much of the movie's time and energy. This is only one example of several of the film's vignettes, many repeated more than once, which left me shrugging my shoulders.
I specifically disliked how the holocaust of World War II is gratuitously inserted into the post war segment. I found the kitchen conversation of the two young wives nothing short of bizarre as they struggle to figure out where exactly Eva's brother actually met his wife. Why not just ask them to clarify where they met? Was this the most significant aspect of a campaign of genocide that occurred so close to these young women's lives in more ways than one?
Although the movie was filled with snazzy cinematic techniques and gimmicks, there was a strange, prevailing emptiness to it for me. As usual, Randy Newman's nostalgic score was among the film's most positive attributes. While the family clearly seeks economic opportunity in Baltimore, there should be much more meaning of a non-materialistic nature to the pursuit of life and liberty in America. I wasn't permitted to feel it until the very last scene, which was very significant, especially since the setting is Baltimore, the place where Francis Scott Key composed "The Star Spangled Banner". Why, however, did it take two hours and eight minutes to draw me emotionally into this film?
In spite of my personal background, I felt curiously distant and detached from most of the film's characters and their lives. Although Armin Mueller-Stahl is a very good actor, his accent is strictly German, which, to my ear, has a very different sound than the Polish Yiddish accent that I know so well. On the other hand, Joan Plowright, who doesn't have a single ounce of Poland or Yiddish in her background, impressively masters the dialect, intonation, and body language perfectly as Mueller-Stahl's wife. My problem is that I didn't find Plowright's character very sympathetic as she is quite a kvetch, if not an incurable dingbat. Why should it be so difficult for an immigrant fleeing from economic, political, and religious persecution to understand the meaning of Thanksgiving, a day dedicated to simple, humble gratitude? Her odd perplexity is even more troubling when we had to endure her clueless whining repeated a second time. And enough with the "toikey" already! Whether that family conflict is based on reality or not, it isn't compelling enough to consume so much of the movie's time and energy. This is only one example of several of the film's vignettes, many repeated more than once, which left me shrugging my shoulders.
I specifically disliked how the holocaust of World War II is gratuitously inserted into the post war segment. I found the kitchen conversation of the two young wives nothing short of bizarre as they struggle to figure out where exactly Eva's brother actually met his wife. Why not just ask them to clarify where they met? Was this the most significant aspect of a campaign of genocide that occurred so close to these young women's lives in more ways than one?
Although the movie was filled with snazzy cinematic techniques and gimmicks, there was a strange, prevailing emptiness to it for me. As usual, Randy Newman's nostalgic score was among the film's most positive attributes. While the family clearly seeks economic opportunity in Baltimore, there should be much more meaning of a non-materialistic nature to the pursuit of life and liberty in America. I wasn't permitted to feel it until the very last scene, which was very significant, especially since the setting is Baltimore, the place where Francis Scott Key composed "The Star Spangled Banner". Why, however, did it take two hours and eight minutes to draw me emotionally into this film?